Last-mile delivery is its own market. On January 21, 2025, Montero USA was granted US12202627B2, “Method of space transportation using a distributed network of space tugs,” classified in B64G 1/2427 with logistics ties in B64G 4/00. The claim describes a network of tug vehicles moving payloads between orbits. Montero is a private firm; the case lives in the patent and public record.

Rockets are efficient at reaching a standard drop-off orbit but expensive at precise final placement. That leaves a gap: satellites often need to move from where the launch leaves them to a specific operational orbit. Filling that gap — orbital last-mile delivery — is a transportation business distinct from launch, with its own customers who will pay to have their payload tugged to its destination rather than burn their own propellant getting there.

“Disclosed are systems and methods for a distributed space transportation network. Satellite launches to orbit are more efficiently performed by large rockets. Modern satellites are in smaller form factor, leaving the large launch rockets with excess capacity.”— U.S. Patent No. 12,202,627 source

For a capital-markets reader, the distributed-network framing is the interesting part. A single tug is a mission; a network of reusable tugs positioned across orbits is a logistics service — capable of serving many customers on demand, amortizing each vehicle across repeated jobs. That network structure is what could turn orbital transfer from a bespoke service into a scalable, recurring transportation market.

The honest caveat: orbital logistics is an emerging, capital-intensive market, and a network patent describes an architecture, not a funded, deployed fleet. Demand for last-mile delivery at the implied scale is still being proven.

But the patent names a real and distinct opportunity. Launch gets payloads to orbit; logistics gets them where they need to be — and a space-tug-network patent is an architecture for selling that last mile as a service.